Tales of AlmostNinja
by Sakiku
Summary: What would someone think of the whole ninja-business if they failed where others succeeded? Different one-shots from different perspectives.
1. The Almost Ninja

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Naruto, and I don't make any money from this. Get over it.

**Rating**: G. Nothing really bad in there.

**Summary:** What would someone think of the whole ninja-business if they failed where others succeeded? Different one-shots from different perspectives.

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Tales of Almost-Ninjas**

**The Not-Quite Genin**

You know, sometimes I wonder. Wonder where I went wrong.

I was in the same class as him. Same class at the academy as the Rokudaime. He is Hokage now. I am a baker. His name is known throughout the shinobi nations, whereas mine is only remembered by a few customers. And to make things worse – I was _better_ than him at the academy.

He joined our class for our last year. He had just failed his Genin exam for the second time, but he still didn't buckle down and study. No, he played pranks and was loud and forgot his homework and fell asleep during class. He was the worst student, and he actually seemed to delight in it.

I, on the other hand, always did my homework. I read my books, I practiced my Taijutsu, and I threw my weapons reasonably well. Actually, my mother thought at that time that I was an absolute genius with shuriken, hitting the central circle of my target 95 out of 100 times. But then again, she hadn't seen what Uchiha Sasuke, the Number 1 rookie in our class, could do.

My parents were civilians. And I think that's the real reason for what went wrong.

When I look at the Konoha Eight, the batch of kids in my class that made ninja minus Uchiha who defected, I have to see that seven of them come from clans that have been ninja for generations. That's 86 percent (89 if you count the Uchiha). In our class, the clan percentage was 50 percent.

Perhaps it was just luck of draw that I ended up in the one class that had all the offspring of Konoha's most powerful families. I can't imagine what kind of uproar would have went through the village if, for example, I had become a ninja instead of the Uchiha, or the Hyuuga. Clans have influence in such matters.

Then again, clans aren't everything. There were several years before and after our class where the clan percentage of their year was approximately the same as the clan percentage that made genin. None of those clan members that were weeded out were from powerful clans, or illustrious heirs. But it spoke of a somewhat fair chance for everyone to make ninja.

On the other hand, almost no shinobi from those years have made names for themselves. The Konoha Eight each have their own page in the Bingo book, with several of them having two or more pages. Rokudaime has five, closely followed by Uchiha with four and a half.

An irony, because Rokudaime failed his third genin exam, and Uchiha passed it as the best. Doesn't that mean that I, as being closer in skill to the 'dead last' than the rookie genius, should have had four and three quarters of a page?

But then, I never made ninja, did I.

After Uzumaki, or Namikaze as he calls himself now, failed his third exam, I thought he'd be sent back to the year below us and repeat everything once again. Well, to be honest, I didn't think much of him at all – I was too happy for having passed my own exam. My parents congratulated me and took me out for dinner in celebration.

So I was quite surprised to see him with us the next day, somewhat less exuberant than usual, but nonetheless waiting for a jounin sensei together with us. I still don't know how that was possible, but I think it has something to do with his signature technique, Kage Bunshin. In class, he couldn't even make one regular clone, but less than a week into being genin, he made a name for himself as using the advanced version in staggering quantities for all proper and improper purposes.

That leads me to our genin teams. I was assigned together with Moyoku Kageru (now a weapon smith) and Kuwabara Kasshin (dead – he tried becoming genin the next year and was killed in his second C-rank mission, together with the rest of his team). Kageru's uncle was a ninja, but Kasshin came from a purely civilian family. Just like myself, just like Haruno, the only first-generation ninja amongst the Konoha Eight.

So what is the difference between the two of us? What separates me from a kunoichi of Haruno's caliber?

To be honest, I think most of that is luck. If she hadn't been placed on Uchiha's team – would she have passed the second test? Teams are only passed as a whole or not at all. Since it was inconceivable that Uchiha didn't become a ninja, she was more or less granted a default pass.

Now that I think of it – did Rokudaime pass on the very same default line, or did he do it on his own merit? How many ninja pass every year just because they are paired with the top rookie?

Ironically, most of the times, those teams are the strongest despite having one or two people who rightfully shouldn't have been there. They edge each other on until the dead lasts have become skilled in their own right.

In the year above ours, Team Nine was the equivalent to Team Seven, and Team Nine is nearly as infamous as the Konoha Eight. Two years behind ours though, the tag-along member of the top team quit of his own accord, not being able to stand the stress demanded of him. And three years behind ours, the whole top team died because the default members just couldn't pull their weight.

But those top teams who manage to survive their first critical missions seem to motivate their weak members to grow stronger beyond all expectations. Haruno now is second only to Tsunade-sama in both strength and medical knowledge, a woman who will be the best when the last of the legendary sannin (another top team, by the way) and former fifth Hokage finally dies.

My pastry is second only to that of the man I apprenticed under, but somehow that doesn't seem like the same to me.

Back to the genin team I was stuck with. Our jounin sensei was some guy who had horrific scars down the left side of his face and across the bridge of his nose. I can't remember anymore what his name was. I think I have seen him around the village a few times since, but he certainly doesn't remember me. Why should he? He saw me for less than twenty-four hours, during which I proved to him that I wasn't cut out to be a ninja.

He led us from the classroom straight across Konoha to a training field. There, he introduced himself and gave us a speech about having to test us once again. To our horror, we discovered that the genin exam merely tested whether we could still learn something from the academy, not whether we truly were ready to be ninja. That was the task of the jounin sensei. Back then, he didn't tell us the statistics, but I found out that less than 40 percent of a graduating class actually advance to ninja.

Our task was to follow the instructions in the scrolls he handed us. Mine said that I was to perform the second academy kata for as long as I saw necessary to perfect it. Kageru apparently got similar instructions because he started hurling shuriken at the next tree. Kasshin started doing sit-ups, push-ups, pull-ups, and every other exercise for physical conditioning we had been taught in the academy. I did my kata, and our sensei vanished.

I didn't really like doing kata because I was better at genjutsu. I could even perform those two low-level genjutsu in the ninja library that were accessible to academy students. But Taijutsu wasn't my thing. Kageru wasn't very fond of throwing weapons, preferring to stick to Taijutsu and those few Ninjutsu we had learned. Kasshin was a bit lazy.

Thinking back on it, our sensei tested us on how hard we were willing to work to overcome our weaknesses. And we failed miserably.

As soon as the jounin was gone, Kasshin's physical performance dropped significantly. The pauses between sets of push-ups or sit-ups grew longer, the repetitions fewer, and the dark gazes and muttered grumbles more frequent. Every time he paused, he looked around to see if our sensei was watching, and on those two occasions that the man returned from wherever he went in the mean-time, he practiced with renewed vigor.

Kageru was woodenly throwing shuriken at his tree, sometimes cursing when one went wide. But most of his shuriken hit the center, and over the course of two hours, most became all. After he had thrown five sets into the tree with perfect aim, he stepped away and declared himself good enough.

As if he had been waiting for that moment, our jounin sensei returned and asked Kageru whether he really thought he was done. Kageru nodded, and before he knew it, ten shuriken pinned him to the very same tree he had just pulled his own out of. Two were millimeters from his ears, two right next to his jugular, two slicing his shirt just above his shoulders without scratching the skin beneath, two fixing his shirt to the tree right next to his ribs, and two pinning down his pants at his knees. I hadn't even seen sensei move, and judging by Kageru's and Kasshin's awed expressions, neither had they.

Without a comment, the man walked off again and Kageru freed himself. For a while, he tried to imitate the jounin's trick. But when it still didn't work after half an hour, he shook his head about impossible jounin feats and went home. About an hour later, sometime in the late afternoon, Kasshin left, too, after declaring his daily exercise program finished. There was no visit from our sensei.

And then there was only me, still going through the second kata in between long rests to let my heavy arms and legs recover a bit. Some of those rests were motivated because I had long ago become sick and tired of the motions, only performing them because I didn't want to admit I had given up. Finally, after my longest pause so far, I just couldn't force myself to start with the kata yet _again_.

Somewhat disillusioned, I gathered the small bag that I had placed under a tree. When I straightened up again, I almost took a step backwards because our sensei was less than two steps away from me. He asked me why I had stopped practicing. I told him that this was not my day, and that I wasn't going to become any better if I continued. He nodded and let me go.

At that moment, I knew that I wasn't going to make it. I sighed a bit, but I wasn't really surprised. Six hours of training, and only a steadily growing worse kata to show. Not really the makings of a ninja. I told so my parents, and they tried to encourage me by telling me that my sensei hadn't said anything yet. In their eyes though, I could see the hope that I wasn't going to risk my life for the sake of the village.

To be honest, I think that this is another thing where clan children have an advantage. It is nearly unthinkable for them to not become ninja. Their parents teach them their clan jutsu from the earliest ages up, more like a game than a life-long decision. Imagine an Aburame that doesn't carry bugs. Or an Inuzuka who doesn't communicate with dogs. Or a Hyuuga who doesn't know the Gentle Fist. Unthinkable. There are those more talented, and those less talented, but everyone receives basic training. And so one thing leads to another until the choice is made without actually deciding anything.

Children feel such things. They either try desperately to live up to what is expected of them, or they break all ties and do the exact opposite. I was one of the former.

If my parents had truly expected me to become ninja instead of only being 'supportive of whatever career I chose', they would have been disappointed in me for failing. And that, maybe, would have given me the determination to succeed in the first place. Whatever it is – don't try. Do it.

The next day we met our sensei once again at the training field – only for him to tell us that we wouldn't make it as ninja.

When Kageru and Kasshin protested, he told them why. Since none of us had any kind of blood-limit or other special talents, we had to make up for it by sheer stubborn-headed training. Kageru was too easy. Too easily satisfied with his results, too easily discouraged when it didn't go the way he wanted to. Kasshin was too focused on other people. He cared too much about what others thought of him instead of what he needed to do to improve himself.

When the jounin looked at me, I didn't wait for him to tell me what I did wrong. I said that I was bored too easily and just didn't have the will-power to get over myself and give it my all at the 1001st repetition despite personal dislike. He smiled at me in a strange way. Then he told me that, if I hadn't said anything, he would have recommended me as the only one to have the right mentality for becoming genin. He told me that, after coming to a conclusion like that, I would never be able to make ninja. My fault was that I never fully powered my punches in fear of missing the target. That I never gave it all so that I never could be destroyed completely. And that, to his regret, being ninja was an all or nothing decision.

With a last wave, he vanished into thin air and all three of us sat there, stunned. Finally, Kageru started cursing violently and headed off, Kasshin not far behind and a bit more subdued. I remained there for hours before I finally went home. My mother hugged me and told me she was glad that I didn't become a killer. I didn't say anything.

Three days later, I started an apprenticeship at the local bakery.

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A/N:** A moment of inspiration where I wondered what someone of those 66 percent who didn't make genin felt like. And then, I started questioning just what else was involved with passing genin teams or not – is it really coincidence that all those clan-heirs were placed in the only teams that passed? Is it really coincidence that the Rookie Nine are such exceptional individuals?

I hope you liked my idea for Raidou's genin test. It was darn hard to come up with something that could fail people without it being blamed on too difficult a test. Comments and criticism always welcome!

Sakiku


	2. The Eternal Genin

**The Eternal Genin**

Through the window of his one-man-apartment, he sneered at the people in the street. He was pacing, trying to ignore the bone-deep ache in his leg.

Civilians were going after their own business. Travelling merchants tried to sell their wares. Ninjas were too good to walk on the ground like common people, so they hopped across roof-tops like rabbits on speed. A genin team – what else could they be other than a genin team, they were so damnably young and not hopping roof-tops yet – weaved through the stalls, exclaiming over colorful merchandise.

Did they know that they might remain genin forever? He bet they wouldn't be that happy doing D-ranks for their whole life.

But no. He thought he recognized one of the brats as a Hyuuga-offspring, with an Inuzuka whelp besides her. Those two definitely wouldn't remain genin, only if they were exceptionally untalented.

He saw a jounin hurry after them, probably their teacher. To his not-so-surprise, he even recognized her distinctive looks. Yuuhi Kurenai. One of the big names, rumored to be Konoha's best genjutsu weaver.

He turned away in disgust, rubbing his leg that was once again signaling that there was an imminent change in weather.

Some people had all the luck. His first jounin sensei hadn't been worth the paper his name had been written on. His first genin team was only slightly better, consisting of an Uchiha and two no-names. He had been one of the no-names, and the Uchiha had been an arrogant asshole.

Their teacher had almost deified the almighty Uchiha clan, transferring some of that worship to the brat on their team. He had taught the Uchiha one on one, leaving the two no-names to fend for themselves after telling them that they were only there to protect the Uchiha on missions.

And so his team-mate had heroically taken a kunai that had been aimed at the clan-brat's back during one of their missions that had gone south. She had died for him, and the Uchiha had merely scoffed at her weakness.

Several days later, they had been assigned a replacement. A Yamanaka who was looking for a team to take the next Chuunin exam with.

He had been nervous for his first Chuunin exam, even if it had been almost two years since he had made genin. They had barely scraped by during the first part, and in the second part, the Uchiha had finally managed to get himself killed. Superiority of the Sharingan – feh, that was worth shit if you didn't have it yet. They hadn't been allowed to advance to the third test as their team hadn't been complete anymore.

Back in Konoha, they had gotten thrown together with one of the other genin who had lost both his team-mates. Now that their precious Uchiha was dead, their first sensei hadn't wanted to have anything to do with them anymore. Instead, the jounin sensei of the other genin had taken over.

That one had been a real sensei. He had taught them everything from the basics up, making sure they were a real team. They had trained long and hard, only taking some D- and C-ranks to keep their pockets filled.

But the more they trained, the more he had begun to realize that he was just not progressing as fast as his other team-mates. No matter how hard he practiced, he just couldn't get the angle right to bounce kunai off each other to hit the target. No matter how long he worked, he just couldn't control his chakra well enough to preserve his stamina for more than a few low-powered jutsu. No matter how often he tried, he fell for the same tricks over and over again.

When their sensei nominated them for the Chuunin exam a year later, he'd almost had to beg his the man for it. He had pleaded that it wasn't fair for him to be holding the other two back, and his sensei had finally agreed.

That time, they had made it through the first two parts without any casualties, although he had gotten himself injured badly enough to withdraw from the exam. At least the other two had been allowed to go on to the last stage. Both of them had made Chuunin, whereas he only had gotten a nasty scar from his hip to his knee where they'd had to cut him open to fish out all the bone shards. After almost twenty years, it still hurt whenever there was a change in weather.

During his long weeks of recovery in the hospital, his teacher had advised him to really think about it if he wanted to become Chuunin. If so, he'd have to find some way to break the ceiling in his abilities he seemed to have hit.

After a full month of physical therapy, he had regained almost complete mobility of his leg. Keyword being 'almost'. His doctor had told him more or less directly that with a skillevel like his, it just wasn't worth the trouble to change that 'almost' into a 'complete'. He wasn't expected to make it higher than genin, and for genin-level missions, the slight limp he retained wouldn't matter.

For almost two years, he had ignored the doctor's words and worked himself to exhaustion every day. His teacher had visited him occasionally, giving him a few tips, correcting his stances. But his teacher had mainly been occupied by getting another genin-team through the Chuunin exam.

During those two years, he had taken low D-ranks that could be completed in a reasonable amount of time without having to rely on a three-man team. Since he didn't have to split the money in four, he was easily able to make ends meet and still have enough time to train.

And at the end of those two years, he had still been less skilled than he had been before that disastrous Chuunin exam.

After that realization, he had been so fed up with being a cross between a baby-sitter, garbage man, and maid for everything that he couldn't bear it anymore. Something had to change.

He had started looking into other avenues. Anything to get him away from picking rubbish out of Konoha river again. But at twenty years of age and no real education beyond meager skills at throwing sharp objects, nobody had wanted to take him in. Neither as an apprentice nor as an employee.

And that was why he was still doing D-ranks every now and then. The rest of his time, he sat on his couch and watched TV, got drunk off his ass, or – in one of his more sentimental moments that somehow always coincided with being not drunk enough – read one of the books where he could once again dream of becoming a super-strong ninja that was undefeatable and got all the women.

Too bad that reality had nothing to do with that dream.

He once again sneered at the genin who had stopped at a food cart, their teacher buying them some sweets. They would get their wake-up call soon enough.

He rubbed his leg.

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A/N:** Another one of those forgotten people. Cynic and bitter, because more work doesn't always mean better results. Sometimes, there simply is a limit.

Comments and criticism always welcome.

Sakiku


	3. The Happy Kunoichi

**The Happy Kunoichi**

She smiles and greets him enthusiastically. _Brother, I have missed you so much. Look at what I've made for you._ She holds up a piece of paper, a drawing. It has a house and a sun and two stick figures holding hands standing in front of it and a tree and many, many red flowers. It is colorful and joyful and very inexpertly done in a childish way, and only the red, red flowers are so very prevalent.

She hands him the picture and smiles cheerfully while he examines the drawing. He nods at her, his smile slightly strained when he carefully folds it and puts it into a pocket on the inside of his jacket. Later, at home, he will add it to his ever-growing collection of art from her, that lies closed away in a drawer in his dresser. He doesn't like looking at those pictures because they remind him of what has become of her, but he also doesn't want to throw them away because they are a sign of her affection, and deep, deep down he still hopes that she is somewhere inside that child that has taken over her mind.

She laughs again and runs through the room with her arms outstretched, pretending to be a bird soaring high in the skies. He smiles slightly when she jumps as high as she can, not as high as she could before because they have sealed away her chakra so that she doesn't hurt herself with it, and lands on the bed with a soft whump and a bounce. _Play with me, brother. Come on, let's have a tea party. You can be the princess Otohime, and I'll be the big bad ninja that tries to take her away. Brother, where are mommy and daddy? When are they going to come back?_

Without waiting for the answer he doesn't want to give, she jumps up and runs to get her doll collection and starts arranging everything for the tea party on the carpeted floor. Otohime looks a bit like her, with her shoulder-length black hair pinned haphazardly against her scalp by many childish hair clips. The big bad ninja is of the same make as the Otohime-doll, a rag doll stuffed with cotton until it can be used as a pillow, the face drawn onto the head with permanent markers, arms and legs and torso and head limp and infinitely bendable in ways that would be just so wrong on a real human. But the big bad ninja also looks different from the Otohime-doll; he has a rough approximation of a cloud etched into his forehead, his smile isn't painted but stitched on in a gruesome facsimile of joy, and he's wearing and tearing at the edges in a way that doesn't signal a favorite doll but something that has been mistreated and thrown against walls and stomped into the ground in fits of rage.

And she always chooses the big bad ninja for herself, and he always gets Otohime, and Otohime always gets raped and beaten and tortured by the big bad ninja before she loses interest in the game and it can't be played to the conclusion that Otohime gets rescued by a team of strong, good ninja with a spiral on their forehead.

The most prominent reason for that is that she doesn't have any dolls with a spiral on their forehead.

So they play, and Otohime lies there limply and the big bad ninja lies on top of her, and his sister freezes for a moment before grabbing the big bad ninja by his hair and throwing him into a corner. One of his beady eyes pops loose and a button rolls across the floor.

Before the big bad ninja even hits the wall, she has already forgotten about him and about the Otohime-doll still lying face down on the ground, and she's smiling again and running around the room like a child with no troubles. She pulls a large and colorful children's book off a shelf and holds it out to him. _Read to me, brother? Please?_

And he can't resist the puppy look she graces him with from beneath her eye-lashes, he never could, and he sits down on the bed with her next to him, snuggling into him and wriggling her way into the circle of his arms holding the book. _Look, a bunny!_ she exclaims. _And there, a toady!_

He nods and makes an affirmative sound in the back of his throat, having learned long ago that it doesn't matter whether his voice becomes choked or not when he sees her this happy. He reads and she points out what is in the pictures and spins her own stories and scolds him for not making the bunny talk higher and the toady talk lower, like the one huge toady with the pipe and the sword she has dreamed of, as huge as the whole wide world and as tall as the sun and defeating the bad foxy that tried to hurt the brave toady.

Thankfully, she grows tired quickly, leaning into him more heavily, and he is a bit uncomfortable because despite her being his sister and her mind being a child's, she is still a fully grown woman snuggling into him. But he has enough control that his body doesn't react, because that would be a sure way to trigger one of her panic attacks. That, and she is his sister and a child and he doesn't like her that way.

_Will you come back tomorrow?_ she mumbles sleepily when he moves to set the book aside and get up. She never asks him to stay; she only asks him to return. It is the only thing she asks of him, so he tries to make sure he won't disappoint her. Although it probably won't be tomorrow because he is a jounin and jounin have missions that take many days and they get hurt and need to heal, just like he is doing at the moment, but she hasn't asked about the bandage around his forehead or the splint on his wrist or the gaunt, hollowed look in his face because he just barely survived being poisoned. She only asks for him to return, and so he will. Until the day comes when he won't, when she will have to come to him to visit his name on the stone.

But hopefully that day is still a long time off.

He tucks her in and strokes across her forehead and waves good bye with an aching wrist, taking care not to trip over the abandoned Otohime-doll still lying on the floor. The bad ninja's loose button-eye has rolled so far that it lies almost next to Otohime's limp, out-stretched hand, like a macabre form of revenge. He ignores it.

She will be thirty-one in two months, and maybe she will be seven or ten or twelve the next time he sees her if the doctors can coax her mind to slowly grow out of its childish trappings. He doubts it, because she has been six for nearly a decade already. And although she has moments when she seems older than their father had when he had died at fifty-five, they are gone in the blink of an eye to be replaced by innocent joy all over her face.

_Sleep tight,_ he says and turns off the lights behind him.

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**A/N:** A bit of a break in style with the other two, but I think this drabble fits into the Almost-Ninja collection. Comments and suggestions how to improve always welcome!

Sakiku


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